Recently, we have shown that small trenches in amorphous carbon films can be produced by a field induced local oxidation with a voltage biased cantilever tip in a scanning force microscope. The depth of the holes and the trenches corresponds to the total thickness of the carbon film while the width was found to be as small as 30 nm. Amorphous carbon films as resist masks for lithography show some advantageous properties, e.g., the stability against halogen plasma etching, negligible chemical reactivity with most substrates and the possibility of removing the mask by oxygen reactive ion etching. In this article; we demonstrate the transfer of the carbon patterns into metal films by argon ion beam etching. By this new method, we produced 10-nm-wide trenches in thin AuPd films. Furthermore, we made small gaps in narrow AuPd lines which have been predefined by conventional e-beam lithography. In order to control and minimize the width of the gaps, the resistance of the conducting lines was controlled in situ during ion beam etching. (C) 1998 American Vacuum Society. [S0734-211X(98)13506-0].